


The Angel Of Small Deaths

by Corvid_Knight



Series: Demonstuck [60]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Demonstuck, Gen, blatant anti-outside-cat propaganda, davepeta goes hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:41:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22550407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/pseuds/Corvid_Knight
Summary: First, you visualize your own magic—a ball of light like a tiny sun, orange and olive swirled together in spiraling, spiky fractals. Most of it's immediately accessible; you're not interested in any of that right now. What you need is deeper, not quite buried—you concentrate on the lightest swirls in your mental image of your own core, tugging at them until the bone-colored magic that you didn't inherit from either Davesprite or Nepeta surfaces.Davepeta does some necromancy, solves a mystery, and gets a new pet.
Series: Demonstuck [60]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1003470
Comments: 13
Kudos: 65





	The Angel Of Small Deaths

Your name is Davepeta Leider-Strijion, and unlike most people you got to be the one who decided how it should be hyphenated. Your age is a little bit tricker to state in definite terms—you came into existance three years ago, you look like you're about thirteen, you've got close to twenty years of memories in your head, and your mental state is some uneasy compromise between all three of those numbers. 

That probably explains how you chose your last name, honestly. You're a god damn mess and proud of it. There's some things you're better than literally anyone alive at, though, which is why you're currently getting D and Galekh lost in a patch of woods. A big-ish patch. Definitely large enough to get lost in. Not that you're _really_ going to get lost. How can you, when the path you're following is so obvious to your eyes? 

"We're going to get shot," D mumbles. Oh yeah, you guess there is that. Hunting season is at the root of why you're here—sure, it's not meant for the type of hunter you run with, but when the _other_ kind of hunters start turning up injured and covered in blood that's not theirs or even human, when people find corpses of animals that aren't the sort that'd be open for killing anyway? It's _special_ hunter time. 

And this time you actually have a place in the hunt beyond "tagged along and won't fureaking leave." You actually didn't even stow away this time—Dirk came home after the first fruitless day, you stretched yourself out on his lap and _instantly_ smelled the death on him. Not the death of humans or demons, you know what the death of people smells like (unfurtunately) but something somehow worse. Smaller, and stronger anyway—thousands upon thousands of tiny deaths piled on each other, unnatural and unreasonable, clinging to his clothes like the stinging aroma of burnt hair. 

You really hate being a necromancer sometimes. It sucks that some of your werecat wiring somehow crossed with your less natural magic, meaning that instead of _seeing_ traces of death, you tend to _smell_ it. Being able to track by vision would probably make this easier—as it is, the only way to tell if you're following a blind path is to go down it, swear at it when it turns out to be the wrong way, and turn around. You've done that a total of thirty-six times so far, with the result that you're getting irritated enough that your ears have flattened back almost level into your hair and your tail's switching back and forth violently enough that Galekh's had to duck a few times. 

"We're going to get lost, and _then_ shot." 

"D?" When he makes a wordless answering noise behind you, you snap your wings open for a moment, a good fifteen foot span of bright orange feathers, folding them again before you can get tangled in some of the surprisingly purrolific blackberry vines. "I think we're cool on the shooting thing."

"...okay, fair. Are we getting any closer to whatever the fuck's here?" 

"Uh..." You have to stop and think about that, closing your eyes and inhaling deeply through your nose. 

Decay. The smell of slowly rotting flesh, roadkill left in shadow where the sun can't reach to first turn little corpses soft and fragrant or desiccate them until they're amazingly well preserved mummies. Something left, something ruined, something that nothing larger than a beetle would touch—you feel like you should know what would mark a kill and then just abandon it, but...

Fuck. "I don't know," you admit both to your own interior monologue and to the question D asked a minute ago, swallowing an unhappy caw as you open your eyes. "Like, something's here, maybe even _right_ here, but pinning it down ain't working at all." 

"...fuck. Okay, well, that ain't your fault." D hesitates, then asks what you suspect is the question he would have preferred to lead with. "Are we lost?" 

"No." 

Galekh says it in near-perfect unison with you; you throw him a quizzical look over your shoulder and get what strikes you as an _extremely_ apologetic look. "You do have to admit that you are not always that good at remembering that some people don't like spending a couple of days chasing things through the forest," he points out. 

You stick your tongue out at him. "'Some people' being you?" 

"Some people being _me_ ," D corrects you. "Why the hell am I even here? You could've had Jade. Hell, you could've called in _Nepeta_ —she loves running around in the middle of nowhere, climbing trees, whatever the fuck—" 

"Sure, if you wanna tell Dis we're borrowing Nepeta to chase down some kind of cryptid that likes clawing the shit out of people with guns." 

"Oh. Shit. Okay, no." He sighs and runs one hand over his face, nearly knocking his shades off. "You think it's worth it trying to hunt this thing down like this? We can always call Rose in for some, y'know, freaky magic shit." 

"Excuse you, she doesn't have the monopoly on that." You just...block out the knowlege that you're capable of using your own freaky magic shit for more than self-defense and passive tracking, at least until D or one of the other adults directly or indirectly asks you to use it. Which he did. Which you're going to do. Which you're not panicking about right now even a little bit. Okay, okay, that last one is totally a lie—almost every time you've dipped into those abilities, people have ended up dead. And then sometimes not dead. And then sometimes dead again. Fun times. "Sit down and be quiet for a couple minutes." 

Galekh blinks. "Sit down. On the ground, or...?" 

"It's a figure of speech, kid, come on." D's already doing exactly what you need him to—grabbing Galekh's arm and pulling him back to maybe ten feet away from you. It's kind of funny considering the head-and-a-half size difference; you take a minute to appreciate that before you close your eyes again. 

This time, you don't focus on external stimuli, at least not right away. First, you visualize your own magic—a ball of light like a tiny sun, orange and olive swirled together in spiraling, spiky fractals. Most of it's immediately accessible; you're not interested in any of that right now. What you need is deeper, not quite buried—you concentrate on the lightest swirls in your mental image of your own core, tugging at them until the bone-colored magic that you didn't inherit from either Davesprite or Nepeta surfaces. 

As it settles into place between the united halves of your soul, you wonder (not for the first time) where the _fuck_ your creators got necromancy from and why the _fuck_ they thought it was a good idea to add it to the mix. Like, did no one realize you were totally going to use it to leave at the first opportunity? Did they think you were going to _like_ being in a cage, being someone's weapon? Sure, you're a weapon, but the only one who gets to wield you _is_ you. 

Speaking of weapons, you should probably get around to using your magic so you can put it away again before you get to the point where it's going to be an actual struggle to do that. You open your eyes. 

It's _wholly_ different from before, and like every time it takes you by surprise. Everything around you is so obviously _living_ —you can see the leaves tilt slightly to catch sunbeams, hear Galekh's heartbeat speed up as he sees how your pupils have dilated enough to almost swallow the green and orange irises, feel the vibrations of a mole's paws scraping into the soil as she bites a freshly-captured earthrworn in half. You taste the worm's death, small as it is—it's earthy, aware of pain for a brief instant but too simple to really carry any fear. You taste a dozen deaths, some larger than the worm's but none even close to the burst of sensation that anything sapient would be—and there's something else there, too. Not a death, not the echo of a death that'd make you think of a ghost, but...

Someone else. Some _thing_ else. It's watching—not _you_ , but what _you're_ watching. All the small deaths. But you _want_ it to watch you...so you deliberately reach out, palm up to show your empty hand for a moment before you clench it into a fist and drag out the lifeforce of a finch that's just had its neck snapped by a hawk in a clearing nearly half a mile away. 

The suddenness with which the presence fixates on you is more than startling; you hiss as it bears down on your mind, fangs that weren't there a minute ago forcing you to hold your mouth half-open as your eyes squeeze shut. It's furious and fearful at the same time, and you sort of think you maybe should have thought this through just a _tiny_ bit more. 

Half of you insists you should drink down the tiny life you're still clinging to. Instead, you open your hand and let it go...and suddenly understand a little bit more of what's going on, as the presence that's struggling to get enough of a hold on your mind to plunge you into unconsiousness or worse darts away to seize what you've released. 

The songbird's life goes to it willingly, for one thing. That's not supposed to happen. What you do is different—your powers give you the ability to command what's left after death, whether it's corporeal or not, and even you have to struggle sometimes with something this wild and freshly dead, this terrified. But no, it dives into the shadow like it's seeing nothing but safety. 

It is. It _is_. That's what the presence you can sense but not see is—safety after death, a road to what's next for those who belong to this forest. An angel, to put it in words for the half of yourself that isn't wild and feline. 

...wait. 

You take a deep breath, let it out, and pull the green half of your magic over the rest. The shadow angel's reaction is immediate and obvious—you're instantly surrounded in its sorrow and fury, drowning in the dark scent of a thousand needless tiny murders—

Galekh shakes you, hard enough that your teeth snap shut on your tongue. They're not cat-sharp anymore, but you still taste blood, which works great to spark an automatic panic and slam your necromancy safely away again. You even manage to hold onto enough presence of mind that you remember to twist out of his grip before you spit out the mouthful of blood. 

You can still tell the moment when D's hand replaces Galekh's on your shoulder, funnily enough. His lifeforce is less calm, less contained in the bounds of his body. "Davepeta?" 

" 'm good." Since you follow that up by spitting out another slightly-diluted mouthful of blood, you're not sure if he believes you. You _really_ bit your tongue, okay? 

"Uh-huh, sure you are—what the hell happened?" 

"Got a handle on what's here." You spit one more time, then raise your head, wiping at your mouth with your sleeve as you turn to face D and Galekh. Wait, you shouldn't have done that. It's going to be hell to get the stain out of floral-patterned cotton. "You can get D back out, right Galekh?" 

At this point, he knows better than to ask you questions; you get a decisive nod. D's not quite so easy. "So we're leaving and you're not? Why the fuck—" 

"Shush." You shrug your jacket off and hold it out until D gets the point and takes it from you; you have to spend a moment of consideration before stripping off the thin t-shirt underneath. The tanktop under _that_ should be plenty for now; it's not like you're spending the night out here. You're probably going to end up ripping your leggings, but it's not like you brought a backup outfit for _real_ hunting, so...you guess you'll just have to whine until Jade gets you a new pair. "I'll meet you at the car in like, two hours?" 

"What—"

"If you get bored you can figure out who's got a cat that they don't keep indoors." 

"Davepeta—" 

Yeah, D's not going to give up on the questions until you are physically not here to answer them. Well, that works. You crouch, tipping your head back to check that you're properly centered under the lowest branch of the tree you're currently under; when you're more or less sure that you are, you flex your wings and _leap_. Without extra magic your wings don't let you fly, but they can give you _just_ enough of a boost that you can catch hold of the branch and pull yourself up. Shit, you should have taken off your shoes too. 

You do that now, kicking them off and dropping them. D yelps. Whoops—but you'll apologize later; right now you get to run your own kind of hunt.

* * *

Once the guardian of this forest's deaths works out what you're doing, it's actually purretty helpful; the little nudges it provides cut the time you expect to spend searching in half. You guess that being aware of every death within the bounds of your territory has its uses. 

So. Half an hour and three very close encounters with thornbushes later, you're crouched halfway behind a tree, watching the killer who's upset this forest so much. He's actually about to make another kill, you think; might as well stop that before it happens, right? 

"Kitty, kitty kitty-kitty-kitty?" You don't expect the little ginger tabby to bolt; he looks well fed and well groomed and he's got a collar clasped around his neck. The bird he was about to pounce on takes off the moment you speak, though. "Here, kitty kitty." 

Sure enough, he trots towards you as soon as you hold out one hand, purring as soon as you scoop him up into your arms. Oh he's a _sweet_ boy, soft sweet kitten. Cute little orange baby. Baby. Okay maybe you need to spend more time with Roxy's pets if holding a cat triggers this much instant happiness. 

As the cat kneads at your chest with his front paws, the shadowy presence that's been all around you this whole time presses a little further into your mind, introducing a wordless but nonetheless understandable question. You shake your head as you translate it from pure ideas to words. 

"I'm not gonna kill him." It's not the cat's fault, after all. Just because part of your nature is death doesn't mean that you like killing things for no reason. "He's not going to kill anything else, though." 

You don't think it believes you. Oh, well, that doesn't mean you're not right.

* * *

Even though you're at least half an hour early, D and Galekh are waiting by the truck when you make your way back to it. D looks up from his phone at some small noise you manage to make; you're sort of surprised he's got a signal here. "...is that a fucking _cat_." 

"Yep." The cat meows at the sight of Galekh, squirming until you loosen your hold enough for him to jump down. You know you'll be able to catch him if he bolts, but like most animals he just wants to go rub up against Galekh's legs, leave fur all over his pants and soak in the not-quite-human aura that even you can feel from him sometimes. "His collar says his name's Colonel and he's coming home with us!" 

"Uh." D stares at the cat for a minute longer, then rubs a hand across his face and switches to doubtfully staring at you instead. "Is this related to the actual problem, or..." 

"He's basically the problem, yeah." Huh. Now that you think of it, his owner might just end up getting a new cat if he disappears, though, which means you might not be solving the problem. "Hey Galekh, want to pretend to be an animal control officer?" 

"...sure?" 

"Purrfect." Colonel runs right back to you when you crouch down and wiggle your fingers at him; you unclasp his collar, tossing it in the air a few times. Hm, can you find something else to get blood from or are you going to use your own? You don't think a fake death will be convincing if it's not bloodstained, and just having a free-range cat probably wouldn't be enough to have someone threaten legal action over. No, you've got to fake his death and do it convincingly. Without a body. Maybe you'll pretend to have found the body, though; most people find a crying kid pretty damn convincing. Hmmmmm. You'll figure it out on the ride. "C'mon, let's go."

D rolls to his feet before he questions you. "Home?" 

"Gotta go convince someone that cats should be kept inside first, and then yeah, home."


End file.
